Extracting audio from a CD

In this movie, I'll show you how to extract audio from an audio CD, becausethere may be times when you want to grab a song or some other track like a soundeffect that's stored on the CD.And I'm talking here about audio CDs that are played in standard CD players, nota data CD containing music files like MP3 or the like.If you have a data CD containing audio files, you can just copy those filesdirectly off the disc onto your computer and then open them on Audition.So to extract audio from an audio CD, make sure the CD is in your computer'soptical drive and then choose File > Extract Audio from CD.

This then displays all the tracks on the CD, and they're all checked by default.Note also that if you have more than one optical drive connected to yourcomputer, you can select among them from this menu here.So if you don't see your tracks, you may want to check another drive.I only have the one in this case.Below that is how fast you want your drive to rip the CD contents, and you canchoose whichever speeds your drive is capable of.Generally, though, if the audio quality is of critical importance, you shouldprobably select 1x, which gives you the best chance of getting the best rip ofthe audio, because that's going to do it in real time.

But if you're in a hurry, or you just need to rip a couple of songs, yourtracks from the CD to turn into MP3s or something, you can most likely stickwith the maximum speed.If you have a live Internet connection, Audition will also go online to the CDdatabase servers and try to identify the CD.So in this case, it's correctly identified the artists, album, genre, and theyear of release for this particular CD--and also list of track names downhere as well.And that can make it much easier to identify the songs if you're only looking tograb a couple of the tracks.You can also Click the Play button next to any one of these tracks to make sureit's the one you want to play. (music playing)Then just decide which tracks you want. Any checked tracks will be extracted.

You can Toggle All the checks on and off, so if you only want one or two tracks,you don't have to spend your time unchecking everything else.So I can say Toggle All and then just Click the three that I want.Incidentally, you can sort the tracks by Clicking the headers of the columnshere, which might be useful if you have a CD with hundreds of sound effects andyou're trying to find tracks that are only around, say, 10 seconds of length.In that case, you can Click the Duration Heading, and Clicking any header thesecond time will reverse the order.I'll just go back to Sorting by Track.So once you have selected the songs you want to extract, you can Click Okay, andAudition tells me it's extracting the audio from my CD.

I chose the maximum speed, so in this case, it's only going to take a couple ofseconds for the songs I selected.You can actually see the progress of each track up here.So there's the first song, let's bring in the next song now.In the meantime, I can actually start playing the track if I want to listen.(music playing)I'll expand the Files panel so I can see all of my tracks as they're coming in.And now my selected tracks have been added to my Files panel.

As always, I can double-click on any one to open it in the Files panel to play it.(music playing)Or if you recall, we could turn on Auto-Play if I just wanted tosample some of these quickly. (music playing)I'll just turn that back off.Now, at this point, the extracted files only exist in a Temporary Foldercreated by Audition.If you want to keep the files on your computer, you have to save them.

I can tell they need to be saved because each one has an asterisk next to its name.You can either select them individually and choose file Save or just choose SaveAll, and I'll just Browse to save this to my Desktop.I can choose the format--I'll just keep them as a WAV, and I'll just keep allthe other settings here as they are.Click Okay.Each one is already going be saved to the Desktop, so I just have to do this for each one.

And if I just Hide Audition for a moment, I see they've been saved to my Desktop.And with them saved, I can now open them in Audition again at any time.So that's how to extract the audio from CDs.

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Author

Released

5/6/2012

Audition CS6 Essential Training demonstrates all of the major features of Adobe Audition and prepares sound editors to start enhancing and correcting audio—whether it's music, dialogue, or other sound effects. Author and musician Garrick Chow begins by covering how to import, record, and manage media files, from extracting audio and importing video, to creating a new multitrack session from scratch. The course then dives deep into editing, repairing, and cleaning up audio files, using the Waveform and Multitrack Editors, and the Spectral Frequency Display. It also covers how to use built-in effects, how to mix both stereo and surround audio tracks, and how to work with video projects from Premiere Pro.